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Largest ever wildfire in Greenland seen burning from space

Land of ice and fire

Copernicus Sentinal -2b/Pierre Markuse/ESA

THE largest wildfire ever detected by satellites in Greenland continues to spread. Wildfires are extremely rare in the country, and it is not clear that the local authorities have the resources necessary to deal with the blaze.

“It certainly is the biggest one in the satellite record,” says remote-sensing scientist Stef Lhermitte of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Most of Greenland is covered by ice up to 3 kilometres thick, but there is some tundra around the coastline. The wildfire is burning on tundra in the west of the country, near the small town of Sisimiut.

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Based on the colour of the smoke and the fact that the fire is spreading slowly, Jessica McCarty of Miami University in Ohio thinks that what is burning is not just the sparse surface vegetation, but also the peat underneath.

According to local news reports, there are fears that with no rainfall expected, the fire could keep burning for a long time to come.